And so they did. After the scheme was revealed, Jackson and seven other Sox players were banished for life by baseball’s first commissioner, the iron-fisted Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Yet because Jackson is one of the best ever to play, many fans have long argued he still deserves a place in the Hall of Fame. That debate resonated this past Sunday, when the seven newest members were inducted in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Now there is a chance that Joseph Jefferson Jackson–dead since 1951–may get to the promised land. Spurred by the pleas of a pair of 80-year-old Hall of Famers, Ted Williams and Bob Feller, baseball commissioner Bud Selig is reviewing the Black Sox case and will decide by the end of the season whether to remove Jackson from the sport’s “ineligible list.” Selig, a baseball-history buff, says he’s “long been interested in the case.’’ He has “a gut sense” of what to do, he told NEWSWEEK–but won’t offer any hints. “I’m trying to have as open a mind as possible.”
Selig’s ruling would only be half the ballgame, for it still would be up to the Hall to consider Jackson for induction. But the commissioner’s choice is still profound: can a sin be so old that we may ultimately pardon it, or does the gravity of the offense require that the punishment be everlasting? Selig also faces a political problem. If he decides to reinstate Jackson, he will inevitably have to revisit the question of Pete Rose’s eligibility. Rose, the all-time leader in hits, was banned for life in 1989 by Commissioner Bart Giamatti for betting on baseball.
The Fix has fascinated authors, filmmakers and ethicists for 80 years. In 1988 John Sayles made a whole movie about the Sox, calling it “Eight Men Out.” F. Scott Fitzgerald invoked Arnold Rothstein, the mobster who bankrolled the bribes, in “The Great Gatsby.’’ “It never occurred to me,’’ he wrote, “that one man could play with the faith of 50 million people.” But it is not Rothstein’s name that’s synonymous with the worst scandal to sully American sports. That ignominy belongs to Shoeless Joe.
Taught how to hit by a Confederate war veteran, armed with his special 48-ounce bat, “Black Betsy”–made from a hickory tree and darkened with tobacco juice–Jackson is the man Babe Ruth called the “greatest hitter” he ever saw. (Jackson earned his nickname playing in stocking feet in the minors.) He’s the player who first visits Kevin Costner’s cornfield in “Field of Dreams,” when a voice commands, “If you build it, he will come.” And then there’s the most memorable line uttered about The Fix. As Jackson left a courtroom after testifying, the story goes, a boy clutched at his sleeve and pleaded: “Say it ain’t so, Joe. Say it ain’t so.”
But it was. Chicago first baseman Chick Gandil hatched the idea to dump the 1919 Series for $100,000. Among his co-conspirators was Jackson, who took $5,000 and complained when he didn’t get the other $15,000 he’d been promised. After the White Sox lost–missing plays, throwing fat pitches–there was speculation about a fix. But it wasn’t till a year later that Jackson, and others, confessed. Though a jury acquitted them of any crime, Landis expelled them from baseball anyway.
Jackson came to embody the public’s mixed emotions about the scandal’s resolution. Yes, he took the cash, but he tried to give it back soon after. He went on to have a stupendous World Series, hitting .375 to lead all players. This suggested he had little role in throwing the games. Moreover, Jackson’s lifetime batting average (.356) is the third-best ever, and his fielding was so good his glove was called “the place triples go to die.’’ He surely deserved to be punished, but, Williams asks, has he not served out his “sentence”? Williams believes Jackson took the money, but that he was “taken advantage of’’ by the gamblers. As to Shoeless Joe’s qualifications, “I believe I know a little about hitting,’’ the last man to hit .400 wrote to Selig. Feller told NEWSWEEK that “if anyone doesn’t belong in the Hall, it’s Comiskey. He refused to pay the players the bonuses they were entitled to.”
The case comes down to instinct. Giamatti avoided the controversy altogether, remarking he wouldn’t “play God with history.” Selig seems bolder. In a country that gives second chances to countless miscreants–Richard Nixon, Marv Albert, Latrell Sprewell–why not a salute to Shoeless Joe? His part in The Fix will always be remembered. It must be. But should not this baseball immortal at long last be celebrated?
